Canadian Dispatch: Dear Americans, Thanks for being who you are
Nov. 29—Dear Americans,
On the occasion of your recent Thanksgiving weekend — ours is long past, well before the snow set in — we Canadians would like to give thanks to you for being such a mostly swell neighbour — oops, neighbor, pardon the extra "u" — all these years.
We say "mostly swell" because there have been times when you were not so swell to us. You've tried to invade and conquer us at least twice, both times, however, when we were still this annoying British and French impediment to your manifest destiny thing in North America.
Since then, the invasion has been cultural rather than military, music rather than muskets, so to speak, although it's been an assault on our borders and airwaves to which we have mostly surrendered and largely embraced. We're thinking here about "reality" television and Taylor Swift. (We gave you Shania Twain and Matthew Perry in return fire).
This year's Thanksgiving is perhaps particularly deserving of recognition from this side of the border in that there really is something to be thankful for, at least for most Canadians.
We refer here, of course, to the results of the mid-term elections earlier this month. We are, incidentally, thankful that Canada, which celebrates stability as much as Christmas, does not have anything close to the boat-upsetting chaos of mid-terms. A spate of by-elections in a given province is about as topsy-turvy as it gets.
Canadians as a whole share the view of many American observers (for example, on CNN and MSNBC — see cultural invasion above) that voters in state after state rejected fanaticism and stood up for democracy and progressive ideas.
Voters also seem to have mortally wounded the chief agent of such fanaticism, and the prospect of another Trump presidency dims by the day. That's good news in a place that celebrates stability.
Trumpism, thank you very much, did spread across the border to a certain degree. The most vivid example of this was the weeks' long occupation of downtown Ottawa in front of Parliament last February by a MAGA-like "freedom convey" ostensibly protesting vaccination mandates. It was like a gas-guzzling, horn-honking and less deadly equivalent of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
An inquiry is underway at the moment into the federal government's use of special emergency powers to contain and remove the mob that had camped out and wreaked havoc in the national capital and blockaded a key bridge to the United States.
The American midterms were such a fascinating exercise in electoral democracy they got one prominent Canadian poll-cruncher interested in how Canadians would have voted.
Eric Grenier (thewrit.com) took polling data from both Canadians and Americans conducted by the Leger firm and discovered some surprising things. For starters, Canada may have a red maple leaf flag, but when it comes to electoral preferences in the U.S. it's bluer than blue.
If Canadians voted in the American election, 63 percent of decided voters would have cast ballots for the Democratic candidate, versus 21 percent for the Republican, with another 16 for an independent.
That would make Canada bluer than Vermont in terms of the Democratic lead over the GOP. The most surprising results in light of conventional wisdom are for Canada's traditionally conservative-leaning provinces, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Turns out the nominally red-neckish trio are almost as blue as the rest of the country, with between 45 and 49 percent support for Democrats and between 22 and 29 backing for the GOP.
Quebec is a bit of a paradox. Grenier projects it as the province with the highest support for Democrats at 74 percent, suggesting it is ultra-liberal in its political tastes. Yet, Quebec is the place that just two months ago elected an emphatically anti-immigration government, presumably a more Trumpian stance than the Dems.
There is of course a message in these transplanted numbers for Canadian politicians. In Alberta, where a less-yahoo version of Marjorie Taylor-Greene has been elected the conservative party leader and consequently premier, a return to the left-wing New Democratic Party may be in the cards in next year's election.
And new Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre may consider putting a little water in his Republican wine if he hopes to capture this deep blue country come federal election time whenever that may be.
The above sounds a bit weird since in Canada the right of the political spectrum is described as blue and liberal red. But vive la difference, and differences between the U.S.A. and Canada — respected and accepted — are another thing we are thankful for.
E-mail: jlotemplio@pressrepublican.com
Twitter: @jlotemplio
